FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - TSA Checking Databases long before people fly: NYT
Old Oct 23, 2013 | 7:43 am
  #38  
studentff
20 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: BOS and vicinity
Programs: Former UA 1P
Posts: 3,730
Originally Posted by GUWonder
At US airports, the chances of even those "scary" "foreign" "men" being "real risks" to my flights is just about the same as the Scandinavian grandmothers and Chilean toddler-age relatives being "real risks" to my flights.
The probabilistic risk of any individual being a threat, regardless of characteristics, is so close to zero that trying to compare the risks, even to say "just about the same" is completely meaningless. But it's also silly to deny that orders of magnitude more "scary" "foreign" (pick a country) "men" have attempted to attack aircraft than Chilean toddlers. Both numbers are so low that any system at all is going to be overwhelmed by false positives.
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